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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ACO (The Proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils from Oral Utterance to Manuscript Edition as Evidence for Late Antique Persuasion and Self-Representation Techniques)

Teaser

Summary

The project â€œThe Proceedings of the Ecumenical Councils from Oral Utterance to Manuscript Edition as Evidence for Late Antique Persuasion and Self-Representation Techniquesâ€ (in short: ACO) conducts an in-depth study of the Acts of the Ecumenical Councils from a perspective of cultural history.
The Acts of the Ecumenical Councils of Late Antiquity include (purportedly) verbatim minutes of the proceedings, a formal framework, and copies of relevant documents which were either (allegedly) read out during the proceedings or which were later attached to the Acts proper.
Despite this unusual wealth of documentary evidence, the daunting nature of the Acts demanding multidisciplinary competency, their complex structure with a matryoshka-like nesting of proceedings from different dates, and the stereotype that their contents bear only on Christological niceties have deterred generations of historians from studying them.
Only in recent years have their fortunes begun to improve, but this recent research has not always been based on sound principles: the recorded proceedings of the sessions are still often accepted as verbatim minutes.
Yet even a superficial reading quickly reveals widespread editorial interference. We must accept that in many cases the Acts will teach us less about the actual debates than about the editors who shaped their presentation.
This does not depreciate the Actsâ€™ evidence: on the contrary, they are first-rate material for the rhetoric of persuasion and self-representation. It is possible, in fact, to take the investigation to a deeper level and examine the manner in which the oral proceedings were put into writing: several passages in the Acts comment upon the process of note-taking and the work of the shorthand writers. Thus, the main objective of the proposed research project could be described as an attempt to trace the destinies of the Actsâ€™ texts, from the oral utterance to the manuscript texts we have today.
Once the nature of the Acts is ascertained and they can used as sources with greater confidence, an unparalleled window in the world of Late Antiquity opens up, as protocols (at least in those parts in which their reliability is assured) offer the most direct access to antique dialoguing we possess.

Work performed

The project has steadily advanced on various lines. Regarding the linguistic analysis of the Acts, the research of Tommaso Mari has yielded important results in various regards. So far, he concentrated on the Acts of Chalcedon; there, we know a great deal about how minuting was carried out, and besides, evidence for the multilinguistic situation at the Council itself and for later translation activities is especially good. Dr. Mari could show the reliability of the early Latin translations of Chalcedon whereas Greek translations of originally Latin parts are at times demonstrably biased. In a shortly forthcoming paper, Dr. Mari will give a groundbreaking account of what we can be found out about spoken Greek at the Council of Chalcedon.
Maria Constantinou is continuously working on an annotated translation of the councils of 536. As of now, roughly two thirds of this translation are finished, meaning that by the end of the projectâ€™s lifetime, this work will certainly be completed. Besides, she is publishing parerga along the way: an article which is due shortly clarifies the provenance of documents embedded in the acts of 536; another contribution will shed new light on the procedure of the triple summons as used by ecclesiastical authorities.
Luisa Androllio is researching earlier administrative records that were minuted; thus, she will provide the backdrop for the creation of the voluminous acts of the ecumenical councils. So far, she has published an article on recorded imperial speeches to the army, and she is currently finishing a second contribution on minuted imperial verdicts in jurisdiction. After that, she will focus on the participation of emperors in church councils and their recorded speeches in this context, helping clarify the emperorâ€™s role at councils.
During his 13 months as visiting senior scholar in Bamberg, Thomas Graumann of Cambridge University advanced his monograph on conciliar protocols as cultural expression; this book will hopefully be ready for print in the near future.
The PI performed a close inspection of the whole source material with the purpose of tracking down possibly manipulated passages (based on overall plausibility according to the context). This collection constitutes the evidence base on which the development of a method to work with minutes rests. This method is based on discourse analysis, but in order to make it workable with minutes, a great deal of heuristic revision was (and still is) necessary. This on-going work yielded draft material for two book chapters which are going to be printed in the resulting monograph. Apart from that, the PI was pressing ahead with the digitalization project, implementing an extremely fast and comfortable search routine for ancient Greek in the Amanuensis search utility.

Final results

Up to now, minuted transactions have received exceedingly little attention in the realm of Classics. Though they constitute unique sources about the way in which people argued, they have been scarcely studied for their own sake. Accordingly, it was unclear how much they were edited or not; clarifying this is obviously an indispensable precondition for using them as sources for what actually transpired.
In this respect, the project has already yielded important results beyond the state of the art. Thanks to a meticulous analysis of the linguistic structure of the Chalcedon transactions, Dr. Mari could show that they are (beyond any reasonable doubt) closely based on oral models. This does not imply that no editing activity took place, but on the other hand, there is no room to assume that large-scale faking of whole passages happened. Dr. Mari could also identify language tics of individuals, proving that these tics must go back to the oral utterance. Until the end of the projectâ€™s lifetime, Dr. Mari will employ additional methods in order to clarify the actsâ€™ nature.
The scarcely researched acts of the councils of 536 will be presented in an English, annotated translation by Maria Constantinou. This implies a considerable step ahead, as there is hardly any research on them at all.
Luisa Andriolloâ€™s research on minuted imperial pronouncements is unique and therefore also well beyond the state of the art. Until the end of the project, she will provide a conclusive picture of when and how imperial pronouncements were recorded and how this recording and publishing was supposed to buttress imperial power.
The PIâ€™s research on the acts will both investigate intrinsic problems (their nature, the extent of redaction, etc.) as well as help clarify some of the large questions of late antiquity (urge for and manner of justification; dialoguing; shifting ways of argumentation). On both of these levels, he will go far beyond todayâ€™s state of knowledge.